The unassuming 18th-century townhouse at 15 Usher's Island is where Joyce's great-aunts ran a music school, and their annual Epiphany dinner was the model for the gathering in the final story of Dubliners. Two Irish investors who bought the house for €650,000 (cheap by current Dublin standards) have gotten permits to convert the four-story building into a 56-bed tourist...
As I’ve tried to make decisions about those areas of influence, I’ve found that I have to fight the “what would Michael have done” or “what would Michael want” voice. While it seems natural to say that my primary job is to listen to that voice, I’ve come to realize this rationale is not a legitimate way to make...
"Before we get to the logistics of writing, staging and filming a musical" — one with five songwriting teams, four directors plus a supervisor, a passel of actors, and creators Jodi Picoult and Timothy Allen McDonald — "in the midst of a pandemic, let's address the elephant in the Zoom: Why would anyone want to watch a 90-minute theatrical...
Philosophers have long warned that this desire for certainty can lead us astray. To think and learn about the world, we must be willing to be uncertain: to accept that we don’t yet know everything. - American Scholar
"The Berlin Film Festival, which took place online earlier this year, will show most of the movies that were part of the competition at outdoor cinemas across the German capital next month, taking advantage of falling COVID-19 infection numbers. The summer special offered by the festival, also known as the Berlinale, will take place from June 9 to 20...
In 2000, Lloyd Webber purchased the building, which he calls “objectively marvellous.” For the past two years, with Stephen Thurley’s help, he has been restoring it to its Georgian grandeur, a sixty-million-pound undertaking. There’d been some wear and tear since 1812. “The architecture had been greatly compromised,” Lloyd Webber said. - The New Yorker
The culture ministry of the German state of Saxony has announced that Thielemann's contract as music director of the Staatskapelle Dresden, one of Europe's oldest and most admired orchestras, and the Saxon State Opera (aka the Semperoper) will not be renewed when it expires in the summer of 2024. The contract of Semperoper superintendent Peter Theiler, which expires at...
"When the Newark Museum of Art announced a plan to sell 17 objects in March, it provided few details as to which artworks might appear on the auction block. But a gradual release of the specifics has enraged some historians, including previous employees of the museum, who described the sale as a misguided attempt to monetize some of the...
"The new 71,000-square-foot facility will be constructed alongside the botanic gardens at the university’s arboretum. It will increase the size of the museum by more than 40%, adding more space for exhibition, collections, and education as well as visitor services and administrative offices for the museum and the arboretum." - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Andres Orozco-Estrada hasn't been back to Texas to conduct his orchestra for a year, but he had been planning to return for concerts May 7-9 and May 14-16 to close his next-to-last season in Houston. (He'll step down in the summer of 2022.) But the U.S. government's National Interest Exemption on pandemic travel restrictions for certain artists expired in...
"NBC will not air the Golden Globes in 2022, the network said in a statement on Monday morning. This means the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will now have to decide how or if it will move forward next year without its broadcast partner, or more swiftly enact changes demanded by industry leaders regarding the org's membership and processes." -...
He's best-known for a series of major buildings in Chicago, including the Thompson Center, the Xerox Center (now 55 West Monroe), the addition to the Chicago Board of Trade, and the United Airlines Terminal at O'Hare Airport, as well as the Liberty Place towers in Philadelphia, the Sony Center in Berlin, and Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport. - CNN
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced the lifting of a series of pandemic-related restrictions as of May 17; the new measures include the reopening of theatres, cinemas, concert halls, museums, and similar venues. However, social distancing requirements and capacity limits will still be in place, and many theatres say they can't afford to reopen to only half-full houses. -...
Last month, Midia Research, which specializes in music and digital media, released a study, “Rebalancing the Song Economy,” that was commissioned by Abba's Bjorn Ulvaeus. It includes some surprising findings — in a survey, twice as many streaming users said a song mattered more to them than the artist who performed it, rather than the opposite — and sounds...
The government has said subjects like music, dance, drama and performing arts, art and design, media studies and archaeology are "not among its strategic priorities", according to the Office for Students, which distributes government funding to universities. - BBC
